News – It’s time to say Goodbye to everyone’s favorite Autocomplete API

Saying goodbye has always been a very difficult job!!! Be it when you say goodbye to friends or even when you say bye-bye to your old Smartphone or another electronics buddy, it is no that easy. Saying a long bye to a service you used is also a challenging task especially when it comes to a service that Google offered.

August 10th 2015 is going to be a rough day for few developers who love to use Autocomplete API. Google officially announced that their Autocomplete API will be no more and also added that they will close it forever. This latest update from Google has merely put most of the developers in shock. Peter Chiu wrote, “In the interest of maintaining the integrity of autocomplete as part of Search, we will be restricting unauthorized access to the unpublished autocomplete API as of August 10th, 2015. We want to ensure that users experience autocomplete as it was designed to be used — as a service closely tied to Search. We believe this provides the best user experience for both services.”

Why this Google API update?

Everyone know that Google provides suggestions before you ultimately type your query i.e. Autocompletes your query that was intended to be more useful for the users out there. But unfortunately, many developers integrated this service in their website with the help of non-published, non-official APIs that has no restrictions. Because of these APIs, developers were able to use independent searches without the assistance of Google search.

Google said, “However, there are sometimes when using an unsupported, unpublished API also carries the risk that the API will stop being available. This is one of those situations.”

If not this, then what?

It has been confirmed that from 10th, August 2015 there will be no unwanted or non-published Autocomplete APIs that drive many website’s search predictions. What if you still want the Autocomplete API? Google also has something to support you to make things happen. But, this time they are clearer and ingenious too.

They have a feature called as “Google Custom Search Engine”. For the developer out there who still want to use the autocomplete feature, the tool will help websites to maintain the autocomplete feature in connection with the search functionality.

Peter Chiu also wrote, “Any partner already using Google CSE will be unaffected by this change. For others, if you want autocomplete functionality after August 10th, 2015, please see our CSE sign-up page.”